Hello On A Friday

There is a lot on my mind that I want to share but the night is going way too fast so I will share another day

but I do have time for a few Friday pictures!!

Just about the perfect meal



Ahhh!!!!!

I am very behind on laundry!!

This here is about ten loads.I have another in the washer as I write and two more waiting to dry. (no,we did not fix our dryer yet)

On the up side, yes our laundry room usually is clean like this even with ton of laundry waiting to be washed except on top of the dryer. There is usually a pile of clothes there. I did not do any quick pre picture clean up. The secret...having our tiny small laundry room on the main floor for all to see.



Dear blog friend Tracy, this always makes me smile!




I closed my Etsy Dragonfrye Supplies shop and my Etsy Lily Quilts shops last week. I moved some things over to my My Little Dragonfrye Etsy shop but will probably close that one as well sometime this year. Why? Well,we sat down and took a real good look at how my shops were doing and the conclusion was we were actually losing money. I was selling things but the only way they would sell was to under price them. I truthfully kind of figured that for a long while but did not want to face up to it. I do still have items that I already have made that I am working on listing as well as some projects to work on still so I have some time yet.I am somewhat sad but I will get over it. I have been wanting to simplify my life more anyway.

SO...

this pile is most all of my fabric book panels, baby blanket panels,and fabric book panel/blanket pairs that I put together to list in my My Little Dragonfrye shop. I originally had planned to make them and then sell them at some point but I will try to sell them this way instead.





Warmly,

A Patchwork Mommy

Finished!

Any spare chunk of time I found i was hard at work finishing up my pile of waiting projects. I am pleased that I am all done completely with the ten quilts!

I also finished up a few soft books and a few baby blankets. All since this weekend. It feels nice. I am now going to start a little table top quilt for a customer.I told her I would finish it by Sunday latest. It will not be very hard because it will be just 12" x 18".

Once that is finished I am needing to start on Easter clothes for the girls. I think I am just going to make skirts and buy matching t-shirts. I saw some real cute t-shirts at Wallmart for just $3.00 each. That will be way easier option than making dresses with zippers or button holes. I am very very bad at both those sewing skills.

I thought I would just show you some of my finished projects that I am extra exited about.

This is a very pretty baby quilt. It is very girly.



I made this cloth book and baby blanket set. Isn't it just so pretty? The soft book is called Learning To Pray. I just love the vintage little girls. It might not look like the blanket matches but it does. There are a good number of blue flowers on the inside pages of the book.



And I finished up The Saggy Baggy Elephant book.



Joel and Lily enjoying one of my favorite places to sit,our front porch.



What a lovely muddy yard we have.

The mud path is our home track.It goes around our house. Mandatory 12 times around every week day for Grace up to Joyce. They are out there rain,snow...OK, not in sleet or hail or below zero...but yes they did do it all through the winter.

Grant and Alan get out of it because they play sports through the public school and have to walk more than a mile there and back.

Elena negotiated with me and does 250 jump ropes instead.The privilege of being 15. A little more latitude.

Just so you do not think I am totally cruel, Grace only does five times around and the four middle girls only need to do ten times around but usually choose to do more.Why is Joel not out there but Grace is? Um...that's a whole can of worms.




Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

Four Bound Six To Go

I finished putting the binding on four of the ten quilts I finished up the past weekend.They are all washed and ready to go. As you would probably figure,I do not hand stitch my bindings. I machine stitch them. I do not really make quilts as heirlooms more to be used that is why I machine stitch everything.Anyway,that is how I can get them bound so quickly...and cutting actual bias bindings is a little too
time consuming for me so I go the simple route and cut them from selvage to selvage. Does that not make me a true blue quilter?

I will spare showing you each quilt I finished but I will show a few that I have comments about.

Remember my Poky Little Puppy quilt? I finished up the Saggy Baggy Elephant one. I just have to make the soft book to go with it.




Take a look at this one. I had a bit of leftovers from the Poky and Saggy Golden Book quilts so I made this one. I added extra blue squares where I ran out of white or center square fabric. I added a second border as well. Now, is this even an official quilt pattern? Jeff thinks it looks like arrows. Isn't id interesting that just a little color change can make a completely different looking quilt.



I also finished up this Mary Engelbreit Mother Goose blanket



and the matching softbook. I am SO exited about this set.



Just to show you I do not only just sew for my shops...I patched up these holes tonight as well.



Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

Binding Put on Hold

Jeff and the group of four children arrived home safe and sound tonight.

I missed them all until the bickering started. Teasing (a little). I can not say things like that! Nobody should know those kind of thoughts cross my mind! I am a happy,joyful,content,peaceful mom of fourteen. I do not think those kind of things. Really. REALLY!

Anyway, I heard they had lots of fun. That is good. I forgot to send the camera with Elena. She might have a few pictures on her phone.


I had an Etsy customer ask if I could possibly make this Suzy's Zoo blanket panel look more girlish. I'm not one for doing special requests mostly because I do not want to disappoint anyone but I thought this request was pretty straight forward.



I had an idea..



What do you think? I cut off the outer blue and added a pink border in its place. I could not find an exact pink match so I put a little strip of white in between the two pinks and they blend well together. I think it looks very sweet. I hope my customer likes it as well.



As long as I was working on the Suzy's Zoo panel,I though I would start on this Mary Englebreit one too. I am planning to pair it with Mary's Vol 1 Mother Goose fabric book. No quilt binding today.




The secret ingredients in today's homemade chicken soup...salsa sauce.



Lily is SO delighted in her two newest talents. Snapping her finger and curling her tongue!

What a girl!!



Now why is tongue curling cute when a tot does it but not as cute when an adult does it?


Um...she dressed herself today.

Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

A Quilting Crazy Day!

With only ten children home I sure got a lot done!!! Funny to say that...only ten.

Anyhow, I finished quilting all ten of my quilts today. It is impressive until I tell you I just quilted them all in-the-ditch. Nothing fancy. Not so impressive sounding anymore,is it?

I will just need to bind them and wash them. Then I am done!



Joel wanted me to take his picture on one of the quilts. Overlook the blurriness of the picture if you can. I can't because it just bothers me.But I wanted to show you how big this quilt is.It really isn't that big.Not even a twin size but it is one of the biggest quilts I have ever made.I was having a hard time moving it through my machine even though my Brother has a 6" x 9" arm space. I suppose if I actually pinned my quilt layers it would help. I'm just a little too lazy to do that. In the end,it turned out very scrappy looking and very neat. Just right for the college girl whom I made it for. At least I hope she will like it.





Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

PS. I refuse to acknowledge Day Light Savings Time. Do you think that will work?

A Quick Hello

Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done.Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.

1 Chronicles 16:8-9

Thank you for loving me,Lord!




I have ten quilts all ready to machine quilt. This must be about 8 yards of Warm and Natural! If I do three a day,I'll finish before the weekend. That sounds a little too ambitious. Ok,I will settle with getting four finished by Thursday so Jeff can get them in the mail on their way to Alaska before Jeff and a few of the kids leave for the weekend. They are heading to Illinois for Bram's Bar Mitzvah. Bram is Jeff's nephew.

It is hard to tell from this picture what the quilt tops actually look like. But aren't the backing fabrics very pretty? Five girl quilts and five boy quilts.




Here is a peek of a few. As you can see,a few of the quilts are pretty simple ones but I just enjoy making patchwork quilts like these.

Gotta love those little retro looking cowboys and Indians!







I will show you them as I finish them. I'm exited!


Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

Poky Little Puppy

I'm on my last back post which is actually not a back post at all because it is almost in 'real time'. Almost,anyway.

What do you think of my newest creation? I finished it up today.I changed the quilt design a little from my original plan but the change was a good change. I even backed the quilt with jean fabric. I had a few mishaps.One of which was not noticed until after I finished it {HUGE eye roll} so I had to take a bit of the quilt apart and re-do it. With that fixed I am very pleased with it!



and of course the cute little matching cloth book.



I already have about half of my Saggy Baggy Elephant quilt together.It will be just like the puppy one but the middle square will be Saggy Baggy Elephant instead of Poky.

Warmly,
A Patchwork Mommy

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Remember the scrappy Quilt in a Day Quarter Log Cabin blocks I was working on? I forgot to show you last week the finished blocks! I guess I was so focused on getting things ready for our caroling party I forgot.

I took them out this evening and laid the blocks on the floor to see what they would look like sewn together.

Not bad at all! I think these quilts will end up looking very cute! I think I will go ahead and add a solid border once I get the blocks sewn together. I will probably work on these after Christmas. I am thinking I need to start making a few boy quilts soon. Most all my scrap quilts are ending up looking very girlish these days.




I thought as long as I was in the living room taking pictures of my quilt blocks I thought I would show you just how lovely our living room is looking since I had to put all my sewing away. I just love our living room. We are not fancy people as you can see from out furniture but I do really like the things we have. By the way,that is not a rug on the floor in the middle of the living room. It is just my quilt squares I have not picked up yet. It would look neat to have a rug that looked like that,though.





I moved all of my light colored quilts into our glass cabinet



And put my winter/Christmas quilts out on my quilt racks.




Of course the dinning room table fills up very fast with stuff so it is not looking all clean like it was a few days ago.



"I love my house, I love my nest, in all the world my nest is best."

So Much To Catch Up On

It is kind of odd for me to not blog for a whole week isn't it? I just have not been very motivated to post this past week but there sure has been blog-able stuff. Needless to say, I am writing this post Monday evening but back posting it as Saturday the 14th because I have some ground to cover. I will stick to picture highlights.

Are you ready?


A great big THANK YOU to my blog friend Sheila for this special gift she sent me! Isn't it just beautiful?! The kids and I will be having a lot of fun hot chocolate tea parties this winter.



Sheila also send some fun things for schooling the kids.

Sheila,your thoughtfulness meant so much to me. Thank you!!!




This has been a fruitful past few days in the quilting area.I completely finished six quilts. A few are on their way to their destination and the rest I listed in one of my Etsy shops.



Lily was hard at work this weekend training for her future kitchen zone chore.
She did not even complain about dish-pan hands!